“All milk goes to market, even that of sick or lame cows.“ ~ Willet Dairy Farm Employee
An under cover investigation by Mercy for Animals of New York State – Willet Dairy Farm exposes egregious abuse to dairy cows. The investigator documented the abuse with a hidden camera. He also kept a diary.
Here is an excerpt from his diary:
Day 1
The mechanic training me says of the cows, “You’ll learn to hate them.” He screams profanities at them and occasionally whips them with a frayed steel cable. He charges at others with a large wrench.
Day 3
Cows are densely stocked in long lanes on manure-covered floors. They are restricted to either standing in the manure or lying in “free stalls,” which consist of long, thinly padded slabs of concrete within the lanes, elevated and separated into compartments by steel bars. These compartments serve as beds and are termed “free” because cows are not chained to the bars by their necks; however, the stalls are too short and narrow for the cows to freely move or lie down comfortably and result in open sores where their bodies hang over the concrete edges.
Cows never leave their lanes, except when herded to and from the milking parlor. They will not see the outdoors until they are loaded onto a truck and sent for slaughter.
Day 5
I saw a milking parlor for the first time. Eight workers milk approximately 500 cows an hour. The environment is filthy, with manure covering not only the floors, but the legs and often undersides of the cows.
Day 8
I noticed several pools of blood in one lane. I pointed this out to a worker, who said, “They’re f—ing cutting their leg on the [manure] scrapers” and then went back to his work.
Day 11
I saw seven cows leaking milk, two with damaged eyes (which a mechanic explained was from a “hard birth”) and at least a dozen with severely swollen hocks. In the sick pen, I found two dead calves heaped in the corner.
I also observed a cow with a severely prolapsed uterus, which I pointed out to a worker, who smiled and walked off. I asked him what would happen to this cow. “She won’t be having another cycle, so she’ll probably be hamburger soon. The only way a cow won’t become hamburger is if she dies in the lanes or is too sick to walk to auction. Then she’s dog food.”
In the dead pile, I found a recently dead cow. A trail of blood led from the corpse to one of the barns, where I found a worker welding a gate. He explained that the cow had become caught in the manure scraper and dragged into the gate, crushing her to death before the gate broke.
Day 12
I noticed approximately 22 cows with swollen hocks. Some were swollen larger than baseballs and several had open sores. Many sores were impacted with manure, infected and discharging pus. One cow appeared to be non-ambulatory. She was emaciated, with sores and bald patches along her protruding spine. None of these animals appeared to have received any medical treatment.
Many cows appeared to have painful udder infections. Their teats were inflamed or discolored, an indication of severe mastitis.
Day 13
Workers struggled to contain a manure overflow that had covered the milking parlor in excrement all week.
Day 16
I began the day repairing one of the “crowd gates” – electrified metal gates, which close in on the herds, producing electric jolts to force them into the milking parlor. The cows appear afraid of the gate and run from it. When the herds become too crowded, some cows become pressed against the gates to suffer repeated shocks.
I also observed workers feeding the calves. They held the calves’ necks between their legs, yanked their heads up and dumped formula down their throats. An uncooperative calf was frustrating one worker, so he kicked her so hard that she flew back several feet against the wall of her stall.
Day 17
I discovered a cow lying near death, her leg caught between a gate and a water vat with the bone exposed.
Day 18
I observed workers administering Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) shots to several hundred cows. Cows continue to be milked for human consumption while…
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, the next time you tuck into a glass of milk, Greek yogurt, ice cream and cheese, remember how much cows suffered so you could enjoy milk that was intended for their young.
Don’t forget to watch the undercover video.
BTW, I just finished eating a bowl of Chocolate So Delicious Vegan Ice *cream* and if you ask me this stuff tastes one hundred times better than ice cream made with milk from a cow who suffered and lived a quarter of her life before being sent to slaughter so people can eat hamburgers. YUCK!
So let me ask you, now that you know what’s happening to dairy cows (and don’t think for a second that this is an isolated incident), are you going to make the moral decision to give up dairy and go vegan?
You can end this suffering by adopting a plant-based, vegan diet TODAY. The cows will thank you and so will your waistline. Wanna lose that “muffin top”? Well then GO VEGAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-GE 2013
Girl for Animal Liberation 